


Mercy and truth

by acrosspontneuf (FangedAngel)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lyrium Addiction, Lyrium Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 00:22:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20461970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FangedAngel/pseuds/acrosspontneuf
Summary: Lace Harding is sent on a mission to confirm the rumours of a raving Fereldan man begging for alms in Val Chevin.CW: drug addiction, withdrawal.





	Mercy and truth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tanaleth (elavellan)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elavellan/gifts).

> Much rambling and many ow feels. I hope you find this at least a tiny bit enjoyable <3333

The ravens fly into Skyhold’s rookery with whispers and rumours fluttering along their wings. Lace hears them cawing through the fortress as she’s sitting on a bench, her face pointed at the sun, thinking of her next mission while her freckles multiply.

Divine Victoria is allegedly on retreat, but Lace has seen Leliana up in her tower, organising the peacekeeping efforts of the Inquisition as if no time has gone by at all. Being in Skyhold feels like home in a way Lace will never quite figure out, so she doesn’t spend too much time thinking about it. Being within the fortress feels right, as right as being on the road, as right as seeing places she had only been able to imagine before.

When she is summoned to the rookery, Lace isn’t surprised, but she does feel a tinge of regret at the sudden end to her peaceful sojourn. She’d learnt the word on one of her Orlesian trips, and it stuck. The Bull used to tease her good-naturedly for using it, but he’s gone now, away with the Chargers, doing work for the Inquisition and for themselves. Lace whispers the word as she climbs the stairs to the rookery, and smiles. She misses those who are away from Skyhold, particularly the Inquisitor herself, but they are all like her, on their own missions. And, like her, they will all come back. More or less.

Leliana is dressed like Skyhold’s spymaster, not like the Divine. Lace has never been all that good at reading her, but now there is a definite sadness tugging at the corner of Leliana’s mouth. The flicker of expression disappears when the spymaster looks at Lace from where she is sitting at her usual table, a slip of delicate parchment in her hand. The ravens are chasing each other around the rookery, playful and loud, and Lace finds the sound comforting as the certainty that something is wrong grows while the silence stretches.

Leliana looks at Lace in that particular way of hers that is meant to see right through people and Lace holds the gaze until Leliana stands, slipping the parchment into Lace’s hand.

‘There is a disturbing rumour coming out of Val Chevin that might prove detrimental to the Inquisition.’ Leliana says, her accent painting her words in music notes.

As usual, she’s not saying everything there is to say, but Lace doesn’t need to know. She has her mission.

‘Of course, Your Holiness,’ she says, out of habit, but Leliana gives her a slight smile instead of a correction. ‘Do you need me to go alone?’

One of the ravens lands on Leliana’s table and pecks at her hand, and Lace finds herself wondering, again, about all the intricacies of the Divine’s life.

‘That would be best, Scout Harding. Take whatever you need for the voyage, and Maker be with you.’

Leliana returns to other letters by the time she’s finished speaking. Lace knows she still hears the ‘and with you’ given in reply. The ravens fall silent as she makes her way downstairs, the ink from the parchment leaving its secrets on her palm.

*

Lace crosses the Waking Sea from Jader, aboard a merchant ship whose captain has dealings with the Inquisition. She is left mostly to her own devices during the trip, and she spends the time crafting arrows and looking out at the sea, at the waves that slap into the ship.

There is fog along the coast of Orlais, and Lace can taste the dense humidity on her tongue as it slithers its way into her lungs. The ship’s bells ring at regular intervals, but there is little traffic as they roll into harbour along with the fog.

Lace spends the evening at an inn, listening to chatter as she eats her meal, trying not to think too much about the rumours that she is here to either confirm or deny. Charter taught her how to detach herself from missions long ago, but Lace has never done all that many missions that required it before. She scouts, explores the viability of locations, deals with bandits. This is another matter entirely.

She understands why Leliana sent her, but Lace can’t help wondering whether the Inquisitor knows. She can’t help suspecting that Leliana is waiting for confirmation before she breaks the news.

The stew tastes like ash, and she cuts a distinctly gloomy figure along the drunken locals as she fiddles with the Inquisition insignia on her sleeve. A fragment of a comment catches her attention despite its drunken cadence, an unsteady man holding on too tightly to the shoulder of the guardsman next to him, yelling about crossing a Fereldan man raving in the square, begging for alms.

It matches the report Leliana received. Lace stares at the ceiling all through the night.

*

In the morning, Lace makes her way into Val Chevin. She speaks to people in the market, slips coins to those who know the city’s streets more than anyone. The air tastes floral and salty and heavy, the fog still lingering, the sun hidden. There are many squares in Val Chevin, many dark corners and secret alleys, but by afternoon she knows where to go.

There is music in the square despite the weather, and the locals look very much Orlesian, though they seem far less inclined to wearing masks. Lace leans against a marble column and preoccupies herself with watching the theatricality of yet another Orlesian city, the way groups whisper to each other, wildly gesticulating with opulent fans. Thieves slip around the groups like shadows, making profit off distraction and hubris with no one left the wiser. Lace watches and thinks of growing up in the Hinterlands, of how far she’s come, and she sees him before she recognises him, and hears him well before she sees him.

The former commander of the Inquisition’s forces looks entirely wrong, like he’s dropped out of a fade rift. He sounds like it too, his incoherent screams tangling with the music, creating noise that chills her to the bone. Lace is the only one looking at him, and her mind almost stutters at the sight, so she takes stock of details, already compiling a report. She must detach, detach, detach, but this is wrong.

Cullen’s hands are bloody and there are new scars on his face. His hair is almost gone and his clothes are nothing but filthy tatters. His eyes are unfocused and glassy, and he’s shaking so hard he looks like he’s breaking.  
Lace wants to go to him, but she doesn’t, because he is fighting something unseen. He runs around the square in fits and bursts, screaming like something horrifying is chasing him, and then, suddenly, he falls to his knees, buries his face in his hands, and stops.

No one else glances at him, and the enforced normality of it all is jarring. It makes fury rise in her chest, a fury hollowed by sadness. For a moment, she hates Leliana, even as she knows that she was the best candidate. It couldn’t have been the Inquisitor or her inner circle. It couldn’t have been one of the spymaster’s faceless agents. It had to be her.

Cullen moves again, and when Lace can see his face once more he looks somewhat more composed, but he’s still shaking. He gets up, haltingly, and he approaches various groups, his hand outstretched. Lace can’t hear him anymore, but the Orlesians continue to ignore him. At one point, Cullen falls again, grabbing on to the hem of a skirt that is swiftly snatched away from his hands. The people around him move further away, and he sits on the ground and begs until he can’t.

When he starts walking away, Lace follows. He takes no notice of anyone, but she still keeps to the walls like she’s been taught. Cullen leads her to an empty alley in which light is almost absent. He falls to the ground again and sobs tear themselves from him, a litany of ‘please’ that is so desperate it brings tears to her eyes. He says ‘please’ and ‘I need it’ and Lace hates this, hates all of this. Cullen is bone thin, covered in bruises and blood that is weeks old, his cheeks gaunt and his skin sallow. The circles under his eyes are starkly dark, and nothing about him seems familiar. Lace’s heart breaks, over and over, as she watches, and she keeps thinking about how it used to be, back when he was at Skyhold. She keeps thinking about what the Inquisitor would say, if she’d see him now. She keeps thinking of how the Inquisitor looked at the mabari that Cullen left in her care when he left.

Lace waits until the sobs fade, and then walks towards him. He doesn’t notice her until she’s right in front of him, and when he looks up at her, there is no recognition on his face. Cullen doesn’t know who she is, and it shouldn’t shock her, but it does. She’s never seen lyrium madness before, not like this. This man used to be a friend, and now he is a stranger.

‘Commander,’ she says, without thinking, because her mind is trying too hard to make sense of the situation.

Cullen says nothing, simply staring at her, still shaking, still disintegrating.

Lace tries ‘Cullen’ instead, but that causes no reaction either. There is nothing there, nothing of the man he used to be. It’s only been a year since he left, and he is gone in a way Lace could never have anticipated.

She speaks to him, rambles on nonsensically about things that have no importance, and none of it seems to register with him. 

When he opens his mouth to speak with a ragged breath, Lace’s heart jumps with hope, but he doesn’t say anything that makes him sound like himself. He asks her for money, and then looks around the alley like he’s terrified, talks about how he’s being chased, about how someone is coming after him again. Lace’s words dry out, and Cullen looks back at her and begs, for money, for lyrium, for the song to end.

Lace thinks back to her time in the sun at Skyhold, only days ago, and feels so far removed from any sort of peace that she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to attain it again. She’ll never be able to look at any of them in the face for a while, especially not the Inquisitor, especially not Cassandra. 

Cullen keeps begging, but he doesn’t move. Death is clinging to him like a shadow, like the absence of the lyrium that has consumed him.

Lace has her bow, but she always carries a hilted dagger in a secret pocket sewn into her undershirt, the same pocket in which she stashes the gold she takes on missions. She looks at Cullen, at his desperation, at his hunger, at his decay, and her hand slips inside the pocket, her fingers tracing the gold pouch, testing the sharpness of the blade.

When she reaches out to him, Cullen grabs her hand like he’s falling, and his hand is freezing. Lace says nothing else, and she walks away, prayers rushing to her lips but unable to form into words.

She barely breathes until she reaches the harbour, the fog haunting her as much as her thoughts, and she doesn’t look back when the ship sets sail. She won’t return to Orlais, not for years.

Upon her return to Skyhold, the Inquisitor is informed of Cullen’s death and of nothing else. Lace knows now that mercy is more important than truth.


End file.
